This time, on this issue, there must be no…Compromise with our purpose…Because it’s not just Negroes, but really it’s all of us, who must overcome the crippling legacy of bigotry and injustice. And we shall overcome.”
One reporter stated: If the goal of political speech was to move men to action then this was Johnson’s finest hour.
But for John Lewis, a “Bloody Sunday” march leader, the President’s use of the civil rights slogan transformed the words from “a plea to America’s conscience” to a national consensus. Lewis was beside Martin Luther King Jr. during the presidential address. Lewis recalled, “Dr. King started crying and we all cried.” Then King announced, “We will make it to Montgomery and the Voting Rights Act will be passed.”
(A year before Hillary Clinton was a teenage campaign volunteer for Republican Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater. How did Johnson’s speech impact her?)
Today “Black Lives Matter” is the slogan of a movement that has disrupted the presidential campaigns of both parties.
And what has been their finest hour?
An apology from Democratic presidential candidate Martin O’Malley for responding to a “Black Lives Matter” disruption with the phrase: All Lives Matter?
Or was it the recent confrontation with former President Bill Clinton? When “Black Lives Matter” demanded Hillary Clinton to apologize for mass incarcerations caused by her husband’s anti-crime bill. Bill Clinton accused the protesters of “defending the people who kill the lives you say matter.”
Clinton also told the “Black Lives Matter” protesters to “Tell the truth.”
But Clinton should have reiterated Johnson statement to Wallace and said, “We shouldn’t be thinking about 2016 we should be thinking about 2036. What does your movement want to leave behind?”
How would they have answered that? Would they have told the truth? The most truthful sign I’ve seen held by a “Black Lives Matter” activist read the following: We have every right to seek to destroy a system that seeks to destroy us.
And Clinton could have continued, “Does “Black lives Matter” want a monument saying they built? Or do you want a sentence in history saying “Black Lives Matter” destroyed?”
(J. Pharoah Doss is a contributor to the New Pittsburgh Courier. He blogs at jpharoahdoss@blogspot.com)
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